Hello folks.
One simple question.
Does anybody know what the official land speed record is for a Model RC car? IE the worlds fastest model car?
Hopefully somebody does because I intend to smash it big style with a model car called project challenger.
Its very much in the design process still but its jet powered model car which goes much further than anybody has gone before.
We all know what the problems are with breaking any land speed record. but that all part of the fun.

It was 134mph done by a electric using a brushless system and a lipo set up. there is a vid of it somewhere on here. If you did a search of land speed record I'm more then sure you will find it.

But that guy also did a run of 160 mph with another car. But they dont know if the radar gun had commited an error or not so they took his run of 134 mph and made that the official record and made the unofficial record at 160mph. Now remember thats done by elctric's and they hauled *****. Believe me they where flying.

I dont think anybody could get close to that record. The design with a jet powered vehicle is kinda a little iffy. It would probably take forever to accelarate because you will be limited to engine size. How many jet engines do you plan on mounting? Not only that, your setup with a electric are easier to alter. I say if your gonna go for the land speed record, stick with eletric .

You will not be able to use the jet powered car to break the record. There are rules for this and one of them is that all the power must go to the wheels. You can not use jet powered engines to run these and make a run at the record. Sorry but people have already thought of this a long time ago. There are jet powered cars out there but they dont go as fast as that electric has gone. You would be limited in what you can do and that jet engine takes away a lot of aerodynamics in which you need to achieve this speed.

Sorry but I have seen many people like you say that they will break the land speed record but when it comes down to it they either get out because it takes a lot of time and effort, Money is also a huge factor as it will take a lot of money to get up to those speeds. A lot of spare parts which when there custom made makes it cost even more. Believe me you just cant go on and say well you will break the land speed record. As you have already discounted rules that you did not even know about. The people that do these records have spent tons of time and im not talking a weekend or two but years studying and making changes and have the backing of several of the biggest companys in rc today.

There are rules to be followed, and you have to obey those rules, there are things that you have to do to make it official and such. Anybody can make claims but until it's verified by somebody that can make it official it's just words.

Rules. lol [:'(] the only rule in my book about the worlds fastest RC car is that all the wheels are still on the ground and that the car is not actually flying.
Watch this space with this project. we will have a full website with pictures and videos.
i am sure there will be alot of people interested in this project.
Believe me tho Project Challenger is going to be one of the worlds fastest Model Vehicles.
Oh PS. For those who are wondering the Challenger is massive being approx 6ft long[X(] and I bet you peoples cant wait to see the vehicle being built.
Watch this space.

"rc car action" magazine, the current issue has an article where Nic Case (the driver) is interviewed and close-up pics of both his cars are shown, along with some of the other cars that participated in the event. For this particular event the only major rules were a 40-inch length limit and that the car must be wheel-driven. Like he says in the interview, the largest problem is finding a decent place to run. It takes a long distance to get up to speed, and it takes just as long or longer to stop. You need a perfectly flat and level surface as even the smallest bump or obstacle at that speed will send your vehicle flying. Plus, if you exit the range of your radio, your car is most likely going to crash. I talked to someone who was at the event and he said this was a big issue.

The rules are there to prevent people from doing things like using a high-power solid-fuel rocket or using the exhaust from a turbine engine. Or just taking a lightweight plane with a high power brushless engine and flying it along the ground, or taking off, doing a speed dive, landing, measuring the speed, and calling your plane a 'car' afterwards. Nic's car had an 8-cell LiPo, a castle-HV 85 speed control, a brushless motor intended for large helicopters, but was otherwise not too far from stock.

Well it wont be official so a lot of people will care. But if your making it that big then why would you go with jet power. Take a a kawi zx 14 or a high reving engine like this and mod that engine and gear it right. That would give you more then enough power and speed to break the 134 mph speed barrier. If your going to make this that big then you should be able to easily break that speed. But once again it's not within the rules and there for not a whole lot of people will reconginize that you have done this. But good luck.

He has the right idea to go with air breathing propulsion but I think it might be better to have the vehicle nitro powered by several big Moki engines and then having an electric pump fill a chamber with a highly flammable liquid and ignite it with a glow plug, the blast would be forced through a small nozzle at the rear of the vehicle. this would create thousands of lbs of thrust and blast the vehicle past the sound barrier at around 700 miles an hour. Unlike Jet engines, a rocket doesn't take a long time to accelerate. In fact the G forces created during acceleration would cause you to black out if you were a passenger, that is why it would be perfect for an unmanned vehicle. The Nitro engines would be important so that electric fan's jaws would fall off when they read about a nitro powered RC car that pulled 0-600 in 4 seconds. When you are rich and famous you can tell interviewers "well, they told nitro to go back to the drawing board!". Rockets don't only have to be for drag racing, a rocket compression chamber the size of a film canister could be utilized by off road stadium trucks in short controlled bursts. Think about how high you cold jump!

If you wanted to go simpler you could use solid rocket fuel, This G-80 rocket engine could be easily obscured inside the body of a 1/10 scale buggy, and then ignited electronically, It has an initial thrust of 30 lbs and then a sustained thrust of 18 lbs for 4 seconds. This could easily accelerate a Traxxas Jato or similar 1/10 scale to 400 mph in seconds.

But I don't know if that would count towards the speed record, G-80 motors can be obtained by anyone for $20 at [link=http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/aro/aro78010.htm]Hobbylinc.com[/link] or other websites. That means anyone could mount one to an RC vehicle of any size above 1/12. you could use a little receiver like [link=http://www.dimensionengineering.com/PicoSwitch.htm]Picoswitch[/link] to ignite the rocket wirelessly, PicoSwitch is a relay switch that you toggle via hobby radio control gear. You can use PicoSwitch to quickly and easily control anything from a digital camera shutter to an electric squirt gun. It works great for igniting rocket engines, the rocket engines are ignited by a thin wire in the nozzle that heats up when electrical current passes through them.

[link=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1897237134922446579&q=rocket+rc]Watch video of rocket rc car with 6 lb thrust rocket engine[/link] This car only has a black powder rocket engine and look how fast it goes, imagine an engine the same size but with 3 times the power and a thirty pound initial thrust!

[link=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3429462816411819715&q=rocket+g80]G-80 in a rocket[/link] In this video the G-80 engine is launching a 10 lb rocket straight up to 30,000 feet at speeds of over 700 miles an hour, imagine what that engine could do in a Traxxas Jato.

Interesting Replies folks.
The main reason for making the Challenger Jet Car as big as up to 6ft long is because of the speed and stability.[>:]
We have done early tests up till now using a runway and following the Jet powered model concept car with a high powered sports car (Subaru Impreza). we managed to follow the model up to 150mph and our car couldnt keep up with the Model. [X(]
Just to let you peoples know that we want to beat 300MPH that is the target that we are aiming for. [8D]
When we get our website built. you wll be able to view this taking place and view the video from the camera mounted on the vehicle.
Oh PS. How will we be able to control the Vehicle at 300MPH? The controller will be up in the air in a Helicopter.

Gyro's could be used to stabilize the vehicle but for a good one there going to cost a pretty penny. But if your going to have a vehicle go thats fast you better have a good fail safe, and a lot of down force. And better do it on a none wind day, as the slightest wind will blow the car off course and totally destroy the car.

As for the rocket powered car thats a little off and seems to be not right. 30 lbs for the initally burst then 18 lbs for 4 secounds is a lot but will not carry a jato to 400 mph. I would doubt if it would carry a jato to 150 mph. Plus the inital burst would wip the rear end around and all that power would be unusable any ways. The rear would drive around the front and you would just have a vid of a rc car being destroyed because you thought that the rocket powered thing would work. Thats why small scale rockets have those guide lines for the first couple of inches so it sets the rocket in a straight course. Even then sometimes the rockets vear off and do some damage. Believe me I know. I had a 4 ft large rocket that was a scale model of a sparrow missle and for the first 2 or 3 times it went great. The 4th time it went hay wire and took it's self out. Nearly taking out a car door at the same time. From that point on I stayed with rockets that had a lot less boost and that where much smaller. I even made one out of a card board paper towl roll.

Sometimes you have to stop and think about what will happen if you do go a round about way. Now a jet powered rc with the help of a rocket would be ok. Get the rc up to speed with the jet and then hit the rocket but even that would be iffy and would still be very dangerous as once there going you cant stop them till there done burning.

The fastest rc car is my rs4 18ss...it was going at 270km/h inside the trunk of my Uncle's BMW M3 at highway while we were going on holidays..xxaxaaxaxaxxaaxxa
Now seriously the fastest car is the 134mph electric one.I have seen the video

Ohhh yeah. well we know how long it takes to get an issue out now. HAHAHAHA. But yeah thats using rules and and having it be official and everything like that. There's rules, but this guy is going outlaw style so as far as he's concerend there are no rules.

Weather thats good or bad I dont know [sm=confused.gif] yet. But this thread is making some good discussions though.

By adding fins on the end of a boom that sticks about a foot behind the car I have been able to launch a cheapo Nikko car using a D size Estes rocket, the fins kept it pointing in the same direction but I had very little control. The wheels seemed to be skipping across the ground and not making enough contact to be able to steer. I suggest steering with a tail fin like an airplane. Rocket engines are the fastest and most powerful form of propulsion known to man, Nasa's new rocket "Horizon" will reach a speed of about 47,000 mph (75,600 kph), more than 10 times faster than a speeding bullet. The Earth rotates at only 1000 mph, that's 47 times faster. It is impossible for any other form of propulsion to come close to this speed.

Were you thinking it must have slow acceleration? Think again, it accelerates fast enough to force a man's brain out of his eye sockets. Fortunately nobody will ride this rocket.

I know what rockets can and cannot do. I am fully aware of the amount of thrust that a rocket can make. And yes rockets are great away of propulsion if you can harness that power and make it into some good use. But I am saying with that much initial thrust (you would need a good amount of thrust to make a car that long and weighing more than an average size rcto go that fast). The initial burst of thrust being that it has to have more then one if your going the way of several smaller ones or one larger one. The initial burst of thrust would more then likely drive the rear end around the front. Another words you would have a rocket car doing donuts. Now if the car was jet powered get the car up to speed with the jet---lets say 100mph then hit the rockets the initial burst wont be as bad and it will then propely the car even faster since it's already up to speed from the other form of propulsion. But once again it only takes one mistake when the rockets are fired and thats it. With these smaller rockets and I'm guessing that your going to be going the way of solid rockets once you light them there lit, and will not stop burning until there are out of fuel. So if you loose control, or you forgot to change the batteries on your transmitter or receiver then thats thing is going to a wild ride and hope that nobody is in it's way. Even if you had a fail safe with that much thrust it's not going to slow the car down. If you had a parchute on it then it would slow the car down but not stop the car completely. There are things that you have to think long and hard before you start a project like this. Or you will end up like Nasa sending 30 billion dollars worth of equipment onto mars and have it crash and burn. It happened twice to them adding up to that amount of somewhere around that price range in the 90's.

Believe me on a project like this the design and what you incoperate into this thing is going to be vital. One mess up and it could cause the car to loose 10 or 15 mph or vear off course or break apart at higher speeds. Especially with the rockets, you have to overbuild the car to withstand the stresses of that much power.